Its nice that you are willing to shell out your cash for a product that you need to download third party patches to make work properly... even when there are many games you could play instead, for similar prices or cheaper, and without needing to download third party patches, which could make it less stable and good luck getting support if they do.
reminds me of some books I tried to read. I read some amount and just couldn't get into it. I don't care how good that you think the book is, if I can't get into it, then I can't get into it. I am not going to read a book cover to cover just because you think its good. I am just only going to go so far if I don't like it.
No way am I going to endure 8 hours of a game just because someone told me that it gets better once you get 9 hours in. Its either entertaining or I am not going to play it
Seriously, I have no issue with these flash mobs because I think that the opinion of a person who decides not to buy something is just as valid as someone who chooses to buy it. DRM is a feature of the product, just like any other. While I may or may not be sympathetic to game producers problems, its my money and I get to decide what is a good buy vs what isn't.
I am all about being a good consumer and not so much about being a good customer.
So you wait for someone to release a patch, then you buy it. Thats fine, but it basically means you like playing games, and don't care if they release DRM. I guess thats fine, just realize what you are saying.
These people have decided DRM is a defect in the product, they are free to think that. I happen to agree. Having to call EA about this would not be something I would enjoy, and would be entirely for EAs benefit. I think I am well within my rights to say an emphatic no to purchasing that product.
There are plenty of games on the market that don't pull this crap. Personally, I hope this experiment in annoying your customers fails. I do hope this ends up being proof that annoying your customers is a bad business plan, no matter how right you think you are.
I, for one, have no problem with letting my dollars say so. Its not like there is some great lack of games.
Hell when I was a teen, most of us were pretty monogamous; its not that we all married our first crush, but rather that our teen years were a succession of monogamous relationships of varying lengths, some quite brief, and punctuated with periods of being 'single'.
Much more so than in the past. I think my friend's grandmother said it best "Its strange for a single girl your age to have just one boyfriend". Yes, an 80 year old woman said that.
In fact, when I was in the hospital last year, I was openly dating two girls. My parents knew one of them, and were shocked when the other came to visit in the hospital. When my mother asked "What about Betty?" later, I said "What about betty?" and my grandmother nodded her head and said "thats right, there is no ring on his finger"
Frankly I think people are very confused these days, partially because we have a society where people grow up having monogamy pushed on them but... thats it. Nobody learns how to date or have a casual relationship, so we fumble and figure it all out on our own with no mentoring (generally).
So you have teenagers who hold hands once and decide "I guess we should be boyfriend/girlfriend now". This carries on into our twenties, I will point at my GFs best friend who met a guy at a concert, hung out with him for one weekend after, and then immediately was calling him her boyfriend.
What ever happened to dating? I mean, seriously, doesn't anyone else think that skipping the entire casual dating phase right into going steady is kind of a juvenile mistake?
Shit, Betty and I practically lived together before we were willing to put any label on our relationship. As far as I can tell, we have one of the few really healthy relationships that I have seen.
Lower rate of offspring has extreme advantages in our society.
Think of it this way... you and your wife have 3 kids, age and die. Now, if your 3 kids, each have kids, thats 9 grandkids. So when you die, your estate is broken up between 3 people, who have to share it amongst, really, 15 people (counting spouses).
Now, if you have 3 kids, and 2 don't have kids...
You die, your resources go to 3 people, one of whom shares it amongst 4, the other two keep their own. They are more free to help the family (like you in old age before you die), they will die with no progeny, presumably leaving their estate and any insurance policy to their siblings.
Overall, there is a big advantage to having less children/grandchildren. Your genes might not care, but you will, and so will your progeny.
There is even some thought that the fact that second and following born sons have a higher tendancy towards homosexuality might be an evolutionary advantage as it increases the overall resources available to the family.
Just look at the numbers for cheaters. Most of the people I know get in monogamous relationships, however, most guys I know have cheated on a partner at some point, and the overall numbers bear out that many people (men and women) "cheat".
I had a late night chat with a good friend of my gf one night recently. She told me how she was jealous of our relationship but gets too jealous and couldn't do it. Yet, this same girl cheated on her last bf, and did with many before him.
Of course, its not about jealousy for us, its entirely about love. I know my girl likes some excitement and variety. It is, for me, about allowing my lover to have what makes her happy. 99% of the time, we sleep right next to eachother, and have sex just the two of us. To be upset with her for sleeping with someone else just seems petty to me.
As someone in an open relationship (never liked the term swinger), I find your arguments really missing the point.
10? 20? No way, not even close.
I wonder why it is that we are stuck talking about 2 possibilities. One a guy who sticks around with his woman, and one who sleeps around wrecklessly and is free as a bird? Can't we imagine more than a binary choice?
How about a harem or more close to a tribal relationship with multiple men and/or women? Children could be raised communally within the group allowing more ability for members of the "tribe" to divide up labor and thus have more personal freedom (one more place where the total is more than the sum of its parts).
Or how about the case where one is in a main relationship, where they might have children, and several side relationships, or just play at parties, which don't result in children.
Thats closer to the real situation that I tend to see evolve in relationships where people who are non-monogamous and honest about it.
Frankly, being in an open relationship, despite all the hype, isn't usually very different on a day to day basis from being in a more traditional one.
I dunno, I cook a fair amount, and I have an old wooden cutting board that I use for pasta (my great great grandmother's pasta board actually). Being that the board has literally been in my family for 4 generations, I figured I should care for it right, so I can pass it on to my nephew some day (I am no breeder)
Anyway, long story short. I put it on my table and coat the entire top with a thick coat of MINERAL OIL. Yes, a petroleum based product, on my FOOD surface.
Now before you go saying this isn't relevant. Let me tell you why I don't use vegetable oil: It can go rancid.
Sure, it might be fine pure oil in a closed bottle, but seriously... you don't want a tub of rancid oil on your hands. Use mineral oil. Really!
Of course since he was "tasked" that usually involves management decisions. So he is probably saying the same thing himself. Reminds me of a conversation I had with an employer once:
"You know, I have no idea what my requirements are, they are nearly undefined, and nobody seems to be able to tell me."
"I know, and we are all scared"
Thats the kind of leadership that often comes with tasking.
and evolution happens regardless of whether you deem it to be an improvement or not. Actually, I hear "tasked" used all the time in everyday speech.
Though you only really hear it in places and situations where you have several people working together and regularly meeting to determine what needs to be done AND you have individuals with the authority to assign tasks.
Hence using "task" as a verb becomes rather commonplace.
Well, I would say that you are brining out what I can only call a correllary to what my HS physics teacher once said (though he probably stole it from elsewhere), "Its a damned fool who can only think of one way to spell a word".
Likewise, I don't see how this is a problem at all. Certainly you don't seem to work in the sort of buisness culture where this usage evolved. However, I find it perfectly clear, and, aside from offending your sense of grammatical aesthetics; I see no issue with it.
"I am currently tasked" it conveys some important information:
A) This isn't his personal machine room
B) He is probably not the finale decision maker
This, of course, also means that he doesn't define the requirements or budgets.
This terminology comes out of what I might call "project culture". When people meet to discuss project status, we tend to talk of "deliverables", "tasks" etc. So its natural for giving someone a task to become "tasking them".
Verbing happens all the time, and it only weirds language until you get used to it. I am sorry. Change happens.
However a full assessment of risk needs to take more into account than survivability. A FAR more important factor is the likelyhood of accidents in the first place.
If driving the speed limit increases the chances of an accident, albeit a less severe accident, it may completely outweigh the inherent increased safety by causing more accidents and thus killing more people in the aggegate, even though its killing less per accident.
Do I know that this is the case? Well, it depends on the case now doesn't it. It depends on the speed limit. It depends on the road conditions and on how everyone else is driving.
In my opinion, there are many cases which I observe nearly every time I drive, where any benefit of driving slower is not just nullified but ar outweighed by the increased danger caused by congesting traffic and changing the pattern of the traffic.
You may ask me to slow down, I ask you stay out of the left lane.
Kind of reminds me of the "Frank Rule" which is that as a public official you have the right to your opinion. You have the right to not believe in gay rights, or even that homosexuality should be legal. However, you don't have the right to say that in public and expect to not be outed for going home and doing it behind closed doors.
Studies of how people actually determine whether or not to commit a crime show pretty definitively that it is NOT the severity of punishment but the likelyhood of being caught that factors into peoples decisions.
Thats not to say that increased penalties don't decrease crime, just that the effects are utterly dwarfed by increasing the chance of being caught.
One great example is car theft. An independant study found that a mere 1% increase in lojack sales corresponds to as much as a 20% decrease in car theft. As I quoted yesterday: http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=644159&cid=24582245
Thats because we really need to change name of our country so we can use the more appropriate three letter abbreviation: CYA.
Think TSA security. Why do we have a DHS? Its not because we know we need all this security. Very rational and well informed analysis has been done thats shown that we probably need NO increase in security at airports since 9/11.
What it comes down to is this: If you are a politician who has to be elected every 2-4 years or so, you know that if you oppose funding even the fakest of security measures (like creation of the DHS), and there is an attack, then you are going to have to "answer for" being the guy who opposed protection.
If you vote for it, you can fall back on "we did all we could". If you don't, then you are screwed because you "did nothing". Now... is a person who is in that situation of literally risking their jobs for not "looking tough" is the person who SHOULD be in charge of budget decisions?
Look at judges. In many places they are elected. So, if they let some guy off, and he goes out and rapes a child, guess who isn't getting re-elected?
Now... do you think that if you are standing in court, do you want to have your fate decided by a guy whose very job could be lost if he goes too easy on you? Of course, "man wrongly jailed" gets some ire up, but it seldom gets anyone, much less judges, tossed out in elections.
Never mind an innocent man, how about a guy who is guilty of making a stupid mistake that looks worst than it was (like someone who was caught taking a piss in an alleyway by a mother and her kid, and is then charged with exposing himself to a child)... seriously... do you expect a judge to risk his job going easy on you?
Its sad that we have made justice such a game. I know they say lovers of sausage and law should watch the creation of neither, but, man.... how can people know whats going on and still have ANY respect left for this system?
Head on collisions are worst case scenario and a rarity. They are also nearly always avoidable. If a person can't keep under enough control to avoid a head on collision, maybe the answer isn't speed limits, the answer is they shouldn't be driving.
The exception might be at intesections with turning cars. However, these situations have a natural limit on them as people don't turn 90 degrees through an intersection at even 30 MPH. Reducing it to a very slow head on, or one faster car hitting one nearly stationary one.
Actually, anyone who drives knows that anyone who drives knows jack shit.
If everyone understood this very simple idea, then I wouldn't see people doing 55-60 MPH in the left lane of a 4 lane highway on a regular basis.
Perhaps if people knew jack I also wouldn't see people walk out into cross walks against the light because they never bothered to learn that edestrians in crosswalks at a light don't have right of way unless the light says they do?
Or maybe I wouldn't see people comming to a dead stop in a rotary, to let incoming traffic in (actually have a friend who was ticketed himself after someone came to a dead stop, and waved him on, he still got a ticket for failing to yeild! I have started honking my horn and gesturing at them to "go now!")
Though my personal favorite are the ones who, on open road, pull right up next to another car, and sit there doing the same speed for miles and miles, like "ooh I got a buddy". Yes, lets drive these cars as close together for as long as possible and make anyone behind us have to go over 2 full lanes to get around. Lets not have some spacing or distance so maybe if one of us has an issue we wont both crash. Good work douchebags.
I am sorry that you lost loved ones in car accidents. To be honest, this is what I expected from reading the conversation up to this point. Its obvious who has personally seen more than their fair share of loss.
It reminds me of reading of risk evaluation in poker and how the short runs of cards that are either far better or far worst than would be average over a really long series can have a dramatic effect on a players assessments.
Yes, driving a car and being around cars can be dangerous. Yes you have to pay attention. However, as long as people are behind the wheel, shit will happen.
Simple facts of life.
Another simple fact of life is that speed limits and many other traffic devices (especially in urban areas) are set by low level politicians who need to find money to support their programs, and are afraid of losing elections if they raise taxes.
Public officials and their appointed men then go around telling lies about how its all for safety. My own town even has the police chief going around telling lies about how "we need the overnight parking ban so ambulances can get down the roads" (ignoring that there is already a statue requiring parked cars to leave a 10' lane; or that ambulances are available during the day)
In fact, if you read our town reports, they lament not being able to fund a full time traffic enforcement division of te police, primarily because of the revenue it would bring in! We also have no turn on red signs at every intersection, I suspect for the same reason.
I think the simple answer is that the majority of people drive perfectly safely. The other comments have been dead on.
Also, if you take a bit of time to observe traffic patterns when everyone is doing 80 on an open road vs one person doing 65 in the left lane, and causing massive amounts of traffic to back up as people try to get around him.
Its not an article, its a book on economics. A rather neat one. The premise os the book is basically that looking at problems as market issues leads to conclusions which are counterintuitive.
The example which lead to the title is of the economics of sexually transmitted disease. The basic gist is that if an uninfected and responsible person enters the pool of available sexual partners, then when he or she takes a partner, they are diverting that person away from potentially infected partners. Also if they themselves pick an infected partner, as they are responsible they take precautions to prevent catching the disease, and if they catch it, then the disease will die with them, as they are again, responsible people.
He then took the opposite case of a mostly monogamous society where less people are out having promiscuous sex. That severely reduces the number of potential sexual partners outside of monogamous relationships, thus infecting one of those potential partners, has a more signifigant effect as the pool isn't very diluted.
I wont spoil the whole chapter, but he has quite a neat idea. How do you give an incentive to responsible people to be more promiscuous, without rewarding the less responsible people?
Thats funny, I prefer to beat my girl squarely with the palm of my hand. Though occasionally a nice leather strapped flogger... and better than beating her at video games, its a beating we can both enjoy.
Stop beating his wife? Shit, if I stopped beating my girlfriend she would be rather unhappy about it. I mean, she bought that really nice flogger and hung it by the bed, I assumed that means she meant for me to use it. Certainly shes never complained. Why stop?
Agreed. Its really sad how easy we go on corporations.
remember Exxon-Valdeze (sp?)? I was reading that around 20 years after the fact, Exxon-Mobile has been still fighting, and finnaly recently won their case, they wont have to pay a dime in punative damages over the oil spill.
Of course there is an even better solution: institute a review process.
Its been shown time and time again that peoples decisions tend to be based more on the likelyhood of being caught than on the punishment if they do get caught. Take the example of Lo-Jack.
"It turns out that a 1 percent increase in LoJack sales can reduce auto theft rates by 20 percent or more...although it costs only $100 a year to have a LoJack, Ayres and Levitt estimate that each individual LoJack prevents about $1,500 a year in losses due to theft." -- Steven E Landsburg "More Sex is Safer Sex" p. 112
Thats all without increasing the penalties for stealing cars at all, just turning up the likelyhood of getting caught!
SO... clearly companies have been abusing the fact that there is no oversight. Its time to institute oversight.
Well I am talking about the TSA, and the whole 9/11 debacle and overblowing is whats justified all of their changes in the first place.
Its like I saw in a previous article. The Patriot act wasn't drafted after 9/11, it sat in a drawer getting dusty... then it was opporunistically brought out and passed when tempers were high.
This is the same problem with the TSA, they got new mandates under the inflated sense of risk after the attacks. They were given the task of chasing boogeymen. Read the TSA blog, there is lots of talk of policies like 3.4-1-1 (liquid ban), scannrs to find explosives, ways of detecting guns etc etc. All stuff that makes lots of sense.... IF AND ONLY IF you accept that there is a high risk of this actually happening.
If this issue is a real problem, then it makes sense to go down this path of R&D and evaluating products and techniques to fix it. However, the entire justification for all of their policies is this "war on boogeymen".
"They" are out there. "They" want to harm us. Give us funding to stop them! Aren't you afraid of all the boogeymen trying to get guns and bombs onto planes? These towel headed boogeymen are some of the worst boogeymen yet you know.
Slashdot Mirror
Its nice that you are willing to shell out your cash for a product that you need to download third party patches to make work properly... even when there are many games you could play instead, for similar prices or cheaper, and without needing to download third party patches, which could make it less stable and good luck getting support if they do.
-Steve
Hell yes!
reminds me of some books I tried to read. I read some amount and just couldn't get into it. I don't care how good that you think the book is, if I can't get into it, then I can't get into it. I am not going to read a book cover to cover just because you think its good. I am just only going to go so far if I don't like it.
No way am I going to endure 8 hours of a game just because someone told me that it gets better once you get 9 hours in. Its either entertaining or I am not going to play it
-Steve
Or you could stop mumbling with your dollars.
Seriously, I have no issue with these flash mobs because I think that the opinion of a person who decides not to buy something is just as valid as someone who chooses to buy it. DRM is a feature of the product, just like any other. While I may or may not be sympathetic to game producers problems, its my money and I get to decide what is a good buy vs what isn't.
I am all about being a good consumer and not so much about being a good customer.
So you wait for someone to release a patch, then you buy it. Thats fine, but it basically means you like playing games, and don't care if they release DRM. I guess thats fine, just realize what you are saying.
These people have decided DRM is a defect in the product, they are free to think that. I happen to agree. Having to call EA about this would not be something I would enjoy, and would be entirely for EAs benefit. I think I am well within my rights to say an emphatic no to purchasing that product.
There are plenty of games on the market that don't pull this crap. Personally, I hope this experiment in annoying your customers fails. I do hope this ends up being proof that annoying your customers is a bad business plan, no matter how right you think you are.
I, for one, have no problem with letting my dollars say so. Its not like there is some great lack of games.
-Steve
Much more so than in the past. I think my friend's grandmother said it best "Its strange for a single girl your age to have just one boyfriend". Yes, an 80 year old woman said that.
In fact, when I was in the hospital last year, I was openly dating two girls. My parents knew one of them, and were shocked when the other came to visit in the hospital. When my mother asked "What about Betty?" later, I said "What about betty?" and my grandmother nodded her head and said "thats right, there is no ring on his finger"
Frankly I think people are very confused these days, partially because we have a society where people grow up having monogamy pushed on them but... thats it. Nobody learns how to date or have a casual relationship, so we fumble and figure it all out on our own with no mentoring (generally).
So you have teenagers who hold hands once and decide "I guess we should be boyfriend/girlfriend now". This carries on into our twenties, I will point at my GFs best friend who met a guy at a concert, hung out with him for one weekend after, and then immediately was calling him her boyfriend.
What ever happened to dating? I mean, seriously, doesn't anyone else think that skipping the entire casual dating phase right into going steady is kind of a juvenile mistake?
Shit, Betty and I practically lived together before we were willing to put any label on our relationship. As far as I can tell, we have one of the few really healthy relationships that I have seen.
-Steve
Actually, not true at all.
Lower rate of offspring has extreme advantages in our society.
Think of it this way... you and your wife have 3 kids, age and die. Now, if your 3 kids, each have kids, thats 9 grandkids. So when you die, your estate is broken up between 3 people, who have to share it amongst, really, 15 people (counting spouses).
Now, if you have 3 kids, and 2 don't have kids...
You die, your resources go to 3 people, one of whom shares it amongst 4, the other two keep their own. They are more free to help the family (like you in old age before you die), they will die with no progeny, presumably leaving their estate and any insurance policy to their siblings.
Overall, there is a big advantage to having less children/grandchildren. Your genes might not care, but you will, and so will your progeny.
There is even some thought that the fact that second and following born sons have a higher tendancy towards homosexuality might be an evolutionary advantage as it increases the overall resources available to the family.
-Steve
I would say rarer than we pretend.
Just look at the numbers for cheaters. Most of the people I know get in monogamous relationships, however, most guys I know have cheated on a partner at some point, and the overall numbers bear out that many people (men and women) "cheat".
I had a late night chat with a good friend of my gf one night recently. She told me how she was jealous of our relationship but gets too jealous and couldn't do it. Yet, this same girl cheated on her last bf, and did with many before him.
Of course, its not about jealousy for us, its entirely about love. I know my girl likes some excitement and variety. It is, for me, about allowing my lover to have what makes her happy. 99% of the time, we sleep right next to eachother, and have sex just the two of us. To be upset with her for sleeping with someone else just seems petty to me.
-Steve
As someone in an open relationship (never liked the term swinger), I find your arguments really missing the point.
10? 20? No way, not even close.
I wonder why it is that we are stuck talking about 2 possibilities. One a guy who sticks around with his woman, and one who sleeps around wrecklessly and is free as a bird? Can't we imagine more than a binary choice?
How about a harem or more close to a tribal relationship with multiple men and/or women? Children could be raised communally within the group allowing more ability for members of the "tribe" to divide up labor and thus have more personal freedom (one more place where the total is more than the sum of its parts).
Or how about the case where one is in a main relationship, where they might have children, and several side relationships, or just play at parties, which don't result in children.
Thats closer to the real situation that I tend to see evolve in relationships where people who are non-monogamous and honest about it.
Frankly, being in an open relationship, despite all the hype, isn't usually very different on a day to day basis from being in a more traditional one.
-Steve
Um vegetable oil?
I dunno, I cook a fair amount, and I have an old wooden cutting board that I use for pasta (my great great grandmother's pasta board actually). Being that the board has literally been in my family for 4 generations, I figured I should care for it right, so I can pass it on to my nephew some day (I am no breeder)
Anyway, long story short. I put it on my table and coat the entire top with a thick coat of MINERAL OIL. Yes, a petroleum based product, on my FOOD surface.
Now before you go saying this isn't relevant. Let me tell you why I don't use vegetable oil: It can go rancid.
Sure, it might be fine pure oil in a closed bottle, but seriously... you don't want a tub of rancid oil on your hands. Use mineral oil. Really!
-Steve
Of course since he was "tasked" that usually involves management decisions. So he is probably saying the same thing himself. Reminds me of a conversation I had with an employer once:
"You know, I have no idea what my requirements are, they are nearly undefined, and nobody seems to be able to tell me."
"I know, and we are all scared"
Thats the kind of leadership that often comes with tasking.
-Steve
and evolution happens regardless of whether you deem it to be an improvement or not. Actually, I hear "tasked" used all the time in everyday speech.
Though you only really hear it in places and situations where you have several people working together and regularly meeting to determine what needs to be done AND you have individuals with the authority to assign tasks.
Hence using "task" as a verb becomes rather commonplace.
-Steve
Well, I would say that you are brining out what I can only call a correllary to what my HS physics teacher once said (though he probably stole it from elsewhere), "Its a damned fool who can only think of one way to spell a word".
Likewise, I don't see how this is a problem at all. Certainly you don't seem to work in the sort of buisness culture where this usage evolved. However, I find it perfectly clear, and, aside from offending your sense of grammatical aesthetics; I see no issue with it.
"I am currently tasked" it conveys some important information:
A) This isn't his personal machine room
B) He is probably not the finale decision maker
This, of course, also means that he doesn't define the requirements or budgets.
This terminology comes out of what I might call "project culture". When people meet to discuss project status, we tend to talk of "deliverables", "tasks" etc.
So its natural for giving someone a task to become "tasking them".
Verbing happens all the time, and it only weirds language until you get used to it. I am sorry. Change happens.
-Steve
Which is strange, because I clearly remember the ruling being that punative damages were not appropriate because Exxon didn't profit from the spill.
Guess I will have to go ind it and re-read.
-Steve
However a full assessment of risk needs to take more into account than survivability. A FAR more important factor is the likelyhood of accidents in the first place.
If driving the speed limit increases the chances of an accident, albeit a less severe accident, it may completely outweigh the inherent increased safety by causing more accidents and thus killing more people in the aggegate, even though its killing less per accident.
Do I know that this is the case? Well, it depends on the case now doesn't it. It depends on the speed limit. It depends on the road conditions and on how everyone else is driving.
In my opinion, there are many cases which I observe nearly every time I drive, where any benefit of driving slower is not just nullified but ar outweighed by the increased danger caused by congesting traffic and changing the pattern of the traffic.
You may ask me to slow down, I ask you stay out of the left lane.
-Steve
Kind of reminds me of the "Frank Rule" which is that as a public official you have the right to your opinion. You have the right to not believe in gay rights, or even that homosexuality should be legal. However, you don't have the right to say that in public and expect to not be outed for going home and doing it behind closed doors.
-Steve
Actually probably not.
Studies of how people actually determine whether or not to commit a crime show pretty definitively that it is NOT the severity of punishment but the likelyhood of being caught that factors into peoples decisions.
Thats not to say that increased penalties don't decrease crime, just that the effects are utterly dwarfed by increasing the chance of being caught.
One great example is car theft. An independant study found that a mere 1% increase in lojack sales corresponds to as much as a 20% decrease in car theft. As I quoted yesterday: http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=644159&cid=24582245
-Steve
Thats because we really need to change name of our country so we can use the more appropriate three letter abbreviation: CYA.
Think TSA security. Why do we have a DHS? Its not because we know we need all this security. Very rational and well informed analysis has been done thats shown that we probably need NO increase in security at airports since 9/11.
What it comes down to is this: If you are a politician who has to be elected every 2-4 years or so, you know that if you oppose funding even the fakest of security measures (like creation of the DHS), and there is an attack, then you are going to have to "answer for" being the guy who opposed protection.
If you vote for it, you can fall back on "we did all we could". If you don't, then you are screwed because you "did nothing". Now... is a person who is in that situation of literally risking their jobs for not "looking tough" is the person who SHOULD be in charge of budget decisions?
Look at judges. In many places they are elected. So, if they let some guy off, and he goes out and rapes a child, guess who isn't getting re-elected?
Now... do you think that if you are standing in court, do you want to have your fate decided by a guy whose very job could be lost if he goes too easy on you? Of course, "man wrongly jailed" gets some ire up, but it seldom gets anyone, much less judges, tossed out in elections.
Never mind an innocent man, how about a guy who is guilty of making a stupid mistake that looks worst than it was (like someone who was caught taking a piss in an alleyway by a mother and her kid, and is then charged with exposing himself to a child)... seriously... do you expect a judge to risk his job going easy on you?
Its sad that we have made justice such a game. I know they say lovers of sausage and law should watch the creation of neither, but, man.... how can people know whats going on and still have ANY respect left for this system?
-Steve
However there is the added question here, can anyone just attach something to your car? and Legally?
If there is no warrent involved, and the police are allowed to put a tracking device on your car, well, then shouldn't anyone be allowed to?
I am not aware of any special power of the police to attach devices to my property, so if they can... I assume you can.
-Steve
Who cares if a head on collision is doubled?
Head on collisions are worst case scenario and a rarity. They are also nearly always avoidable. If a person can't keep under enough control to avoid a head on collision, maybe the answer isn't speed limits, the answer is they shouldn't be driving.
The exception might be at intesections with turning cars. However, these situations have a natural limit on them as people don't turn 90 degrees through an intersection at even 30 MPH. Reducing it to a very slow head on, or one faster car hitting one nearly stationary one.
-Steve
Actually, anyone who drives knows that anyone who drives knows jack shit.
If everyone understood this very simple idea, then I wouldn't see people doing 55-60 MPH in the left lane of a 4 lane highway on a regular basis.
Perhaps if people knew jack I also wouldn't see people walk out into cross walks against the light because they never bothered to learn that edestrians in crosswalks at a light don't have right of way unless the light says they do?
Or maybe I wouldn't see people comming to a dead stop in a rotary, to let incoming traffic in (actually have a friend who was ticketed himself after someone came to a dead stop, and waved him on, he still got a ticket for failing to yeild! I have started honking my horn and gesturing at them to "go now!")
Though my personal favorite are the ones who, on open road, pull right up next to another car, and sit there doing the same speed for miles and miles, like "ooh I got a buddy". Yes, lets drive these cars as close together for as long as possible and make anyone behind us have to go over 2 full lanes to get around. Lets not have some spacing or distance so maybe if one of us has an issue we wont both crash. Good work douchebags.
-Steve
I am sorry that you lost loved ones in car accidents. To be honest, this is what I expected from reading the conversation up to this point. Its obvious who has personally seen more than their fair share of loss.
It reminds me of reading of risk evaluation in poker and how the short runs of cards that are either far better or far worst than would be average over a really long series can have a dramatic effect on a players assessments.
Yes, driving a car and being around cars can be dangerous. Yes you have to pay attention. However, as long as people are behind the wheel, shit will happen.
Simple facts of life.
Another simple fact of life is that speed limits and many other traffic devices (especially in urban areas) are set by low level politicians who need to find money to support their programs, and are afraid of losing elections if they raise taxes.
Public officials and their appointed men then go around telling lies about how its all for safety. My own town even has the police chief going around telling lies about how "we need the overnight parking ban so ambulances can get down the roads" (ignoring that there is already a statue requiring parked cars to leave a 10' lane; or that ambulances are available during the day)
In fact, if you read our town reports, they lament not being able to fund a full time traffic enforcement division of te police, primarily because of the revenue it would bring in! We also have no turn on red signs at every intersection, I suspect for the same reason.
I think the simple answer is that the majority of people drive perfectly safely. The other comments have been dead on.
Also, if you take a bit of time to observe traffic patterns when everyone is doing 80 on an open road vs one person doing 65 in the left lane, and causing massive amounts of traffic to back up as people try to get around him.
-Steve
Its not an article, its a book on economics. A rather neat one. The premise os the book is basically that looking at problems as market issues leads to conclusions which are counterintuitive.
The example which lead to the title is of the economics of sexually transmitted disease. The basic gist is that if an uninfected and responsible person enters the pool of available sexual partners, then when he or she takes a partner, they are diverting that person away from potentially infected partners. Also if they themselves pick an infected partner, as they are responsible they take precautions to prevent catching the disease, and if they catch it, then the disease will die with them, as they are again, responsible people.
He then took the opposite case of a mostly monogamous society where less people are out having promiscuous sex. That severely reduces the number of potential sexual partners outside of monogamous relationships, thus infecting one of those potential partners, has a more signifigant effect as the pool isn't very diluted.
I wont spoil the whole chapter, but he has quite a neat idea. How do you give an incentive to responsible people to be more promiscuous, without rewarding the less responsible people?
-Steve
Thats funny, I prefer to beat my girl squarely with the palm of my hand. Though occasionally a nice leather strapped flogger... and better than beating her at video games, its a beating we can both enjoy.
-Steve
Stop beating his wife? Shit, if I stopped beating my girlfriend she would be rather unhappy about it. I mean, she bought that really nice flogger and hung it by the bed, I assumed that means she meant for me to use it. Certainly shes never complained. Why stop?
-Steve
Agreed. Its really sad how easy we go on corporations.
remember Exxon-Valdeze (sp?)? I was reading that around 20 years after the fact, Exxon-Mobile has been still fighting, and finnaly recently won their case, they wont have to pay a dime in punative damages over the oil spill.
Of course there is an even better solution: institute a review process.
Its been shown time and time again that peoples decisions tend to be based more on the likelyhood of being caught than on the punishment if they do get caught. Take the example of Lo-Jack.
Thats all without increasing the penalties for stealing cars at all, just turning up the likelyhood of getting caught!
SO... clearly companies have been abusing the fact that there is no oversight. Its time to institute oversight.
-Steve
Well I am talking about the TSA, and the whole 9/11 debacle and overblowing is whats justified all of their changes in the first place.
Its like I saw in a previous article. The Patriot act wasn't drafted after 9/11, it sat in a drawer getting dusty... then it was opporunistically brought out and passed when tempers were high.
This is the same problem with the TSA, they got new mandates under the inflated sense of risk after the attacks. They were given the task of chasing boogeymen.
Read the TSA blog, there is lots of talk of policies like 3.4-1-1 (liquid ban), scannrs to find explosives, ways of detecting guns etc etc. All stuff that makes lots of sense.... IF AND ONLY IF you accept that there is a high risk of this actually happening.
If this issue is a real problem, then it makes sense to go down this path of R&D and evaluating products and techniques to fix it. However, the entire justification for all of their policies is this "war on boogeymen".
"They" are out there. "They" want to harm us. Give us funding to stop them! Aren't you afraid of all the boogeymen trying to get guns and bombs onto planes? These towel headed boogeymen are some of the worst boogeymen yet you know.
-Steve